Diamonds are forever cursed

Queen Mary's crown, made for the Coronation of King George V. The crown was made by Garrard & Co and contains 2,200 diamonds. It contained the Koh-i-Noor diamond as well as Cullinan III and Cullinan IV.

WE all like a good curse.

The Curse of King Tut’s tomb, the Kennedy Curse, the Curse of Superman — you name it, we’ll wrap some superstitious mumbo-jumbo around anything you care to mention.

But when it comes to curses, diamonds are trumps.

There are more curses and promises of evil tidings to come connected with gemstones than you could shake an Egyptian mummy’s stick at.

And the more famous the stone, the more tales of death and destruction they inspire.

For some reason, many of the cursed gems were supposedly plucked from the eye of a Hindu idol, bringing catastrophic consequences for the pilferer and subsequent possessors of the gems.

Just think of the classic music hall monologue The Green Eye Of The Little Yellow God, in which a wild young officer known as Mad Carew stole “north of Kathmandu” only to be brutally murdered.

Now, admittedly some of the stories behind these spooky sparklers have been significantly embroidered — or completely made up — but we won’t let that get in the way of many a good morbid yarn.

The most-infamous cursed gem of all is the Hope Diamond, which maybe should be renamed the “Abandon All Hope” Diamond as it’s said to bring death or tragedy to those who own or wear it.

Yes, it was supposedly stolen from the eye of a statue of the goddess Sita, but it was actually bought in India in the 1660s by a French merchant who then sold it to King Louis XIV whereupon it became known as the French Blue.

The merchant, one Monsieur Tavernier, was said to be the first to die horribly from its curse, being torn apart by wild dogs.

In fact, he lived into his 80s.

This didn’t stop the New York Times publishing a 1911 article which listed him as one of no fewer than 14 who fell prey to the curse.

True, Louis’ descendent Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette met their fate on la guillotine during the French Revolution, but it wasn’t until legendary jeweller Pierre Cartier acquired it in 1910 that the scare stories were stoked up as a selling point.

His ploy worked, but Washington DC socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean might have wished it hadn’t.

Her son was killed in a car accident, her husband ran off with another woman and died an alcoholic after destroying their fortune, the family newspaper went bankrupt, her daughter then died of an overdose and Evalyn herself died of pneumonia aged just 60.

No wonder the next owner presented the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian which, instead of being struck by lightning or a plague of locusts, finds the gem its most-popular exhibit, drawing seven million visitors a year.

Another famed diamond, the Koh-i-Noor, was mined in India and is now part of the Queen’s crown, but — surprise, surprise — it was once allegedly the eye of a Hindu idol.

Now, the Royal Family seem a sensible bunch but they’re not taking any chances with the Hindu curse that says only a woman can wear the Koh-i-Noor safely as any male who does “will know its misfortunes”.

As a result, no male heir to the throne has ever worn the gem.

Don’t believe everything you read about the Delhi Purple Sapphire — for one thing it’s an amethyst.

It was presented to the Natural History Museum by the daughter of Persian scholar Edward Heron-Allen along with a letter that stated it was “looted from the temple of the god Indra at Cawnpore during the Indian Mutiny of 1855 and brought to this country by Colonel W Ferris of the Bengal Cavalry who, from the day he possessed it, was unfortunate”.

Ferris passed it to his son, then to Heron-Allen, and the museum tells of a “trail of suicides, apparitions, disasters and failed careers”.

He eventually had it locked inside seven boxes and deposited it with his bankers along with an instruction that it not see the light of day until 33 years after his death.

The museum has so far resisted the letter’s recommendation that they “cast it into the sea”.

Thing is, it’s likely old Heron-Allen made it all up to publicise a short story he wrote in 1921 called The Purple Sapphire.

You’ll have seen the Black Prince’s Ruby countless times — it’s the big deep-red stone in the middle of the Imperial State Crown.

Once again it’s not actually a ruby but a red spinel — hence its nickname The Great Imposter — but its colour is fitting as it’s had a fairly-bloody history.

It was taken from the body of the Sultan of Granada after he was brutally stabbed to death by the brilliantly-named Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile, who then gave it to Edward Woodstock, known as the Black Prince, in thanks for the powerful knight coming to his aid when his half-brother attacked his reign in the 13th century.

Edward, though, contracted a mysterious disease at the same time and the gem was subsequently involved in several other big battles — Henry V wore it at Agincourt where he nearly died, and Richard III was wearing it at Bosworth where he met his end.

And finally we come to the Black Orlov, a gunmetal-coloured diamond whose theft by a monk from — you guessed it — the eye of an idol in an Indian shrine kick-started a curse.

And a very particular curse at that, as two Russian princesses — one called Nadia Orlov, after whom it is named — who owned it are said to have leapt to their doom from tall buildings and JW Paris, the diamond dealer who brought it into the United States, threw himself from one of Manhattan’s tallest buildings in 1932.

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